Almost Perfect Read online

  Thunder rumbled ominously and all eyes looked up, but no rain fell.

  “And what can we get you, little lady?”

  Carolyn looked from the dark sky into the squinted, mocking brown eyes of Bubba Wannamacher. At six foot two and weighing some two hundred and sixty pounds, he seemed to tower over her, a caricature of Texas size and structure. When she didn’t answer, he used a forefinger to push his expensive gray felt hat back on his head. Unbelievably, he reached his other hand between his legs and pulled upward at his crotch.

  “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, furious but nonetheless exceedingly disconcerted. She was grateful to see Sammie Jo and Cactus approaching from her left and Doc Jamison from her right.

  “What?” Bubba asked, his voice the very sound of truculent innocence. “If you don’t want anything, you just have to say so.”

  “I want you to leave us alone,” she said coldly, forcing herself to meet his eyes. If only Pete were here, she thought, and tried to dismiss the notion.

  He smiled, an unctuous, oily insinuation in his glittery assessment of her body. “And what if I was to say I couldn’t do that?” he asked, his voice pitched too low to be heard by the nearly deaf old-timers sitting less than five feet away.

  “Then I’d say you’re staring at a stalking charge,” Sammie Jo said, not nearly as quietly as he.

  To Carolyn’s disgust her hands were trembling and her stomach knotted painfully. Cactus dropped a hand on her shoulder.

  Bubba Wannamacher laughed aloud. “Is that so?” he asked. “And how are you gonna prove that, huh, Miz Spring? Me and Jimmy ain’t been hide nor hair near the widow’s place.”

  “Did you know that authorities can test for spray paint residue on your hands just as if you’d fired a gun?” Cactus asked coldly.

  Carolyn had no idea if that was true or not, but the sudden flattening of Bubba’s features made the assertion worth the uttering.

  “Why don’t you do yourself a favor?” Bubba asked, menace clear in every word. “You can’t work that place by yourself. Word has it you don’t have enough money to even run one old mama cow and her calf, let alone a herd. We can use it right well. We need it, you might say. And we’d really consider it a favor if you’d just pack up your pretty little family and clear the hell out.”

  “It’s my property and my home,” Carolyn said, striving to sound collected. Cool. She knew she sounded as scared as she felt.

  “We’ve worked that place for ten years without getting a single dime from you or yours. I reckon we earned the rights to it fair and square.”

  “You should have been paying us to lease the land all these years,” she asserted.

  He snorted. “Hell, lady, we was doing you a favor. Everyone ’round here knows it, too.”

  “What do we know?” Doc Jamison asked, stepping up beside Bubba.

  The elder Wannamacher brother turned to glance at Doc. Carolyn couldn’t wholly read the expression on Bubba’s face, but underriding her relief at Doc’s presence she felt a pang of pity for her old acquaintance.

  “Everybody knows what a good rain can do for the land around here. I was just telling the little lady how lucky she was it rained a mite today.”

  “Is that right?” Doc asked.

  “He was threatening her,” Sammie Jo said, leaning closer to Carolyn, who, while conscious of feeling safer with her friends, was also aware this feeling was nothing remotely like the way she’d felt when Pete pushed her behind him. Or when he held her in his arms.

  Bubba pulled back in mock horror. “Threatening her? Me? Hell, I think you been in the sun too long, Miz Spring. Tell her, Doc, old Bubba wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Old Bubba better not,” Doc said with a friendly smile on his face. He reached down and took Carolyn’s hand to pull her to her feet.

  Now that she was standing, Bubba didn’t seem nearly so oppressive, nearly so massive.

  “Taylor was asking after you,” Doc said. “Something about staying out at the ranch with you awhile,” he said. “But I told her that your new hired hand was more than a match for any trouble that might crop up.”

  Carolyn gave him a grateful smile.

  Bubba, apparently recognizing he’d been beaten at his little game, tipped his hat and ambled away, stopping at one of the chefs-of-the-day to inquire after her health.

  “I thought it was time we let the Wannamachers in on the fact that Pete Jackson’s out at your place,” Doc said.

  Carolyn didn’t say anything; she wasn’t sure if Pete would even be there when she got back. She knew he’d seen the farewell in her face, heard it in her voice. And he’d known why he had to go.

  What he didn’t know was how very sorry she felt.

  Taylor had been right: the storm circled back and hit with a vengeance of thunder, lightning and seemingly torrential rain. Pete didn’t stop to consider anything beyond his need to help Carolyn get the girls from the Ranger into the house without getting totally soaked. And he thought about the need to tell her the truth.

  In the couple of hours she’d been gone, after his bags were packed and his arrowheads secured, he’d made the nearly astonishing discovery that he didn’t want to go.

  It had nothing to do with protecting her and the girls. Nor with what other reasons he had for having come to this desolate part of the country. It had to do with something inside him, something she was changing.

  No, he didn’t want to leave her. Not this way. For someone who had made his living by living a lie, he suddenly had a burning need for Carolyn to know the truth about him. Dark as it might be, something told him that, of all women, Carolyn had it in her to understand.

  He tucked his head against his shoulder and ran for the vehicle, holding up his arm against the glare of the headlights and frowning against the onslaught of cold, driving rain.

  He was rounding the front of the car before he saw it wasn’t Carolyn’s Ranger. And the heavyset cowboy descending the cab of the double-cabbed, half-ton pickup didn’t resemble Carolyn in the slightest way.

  “You the new hired hand?” the man asked.

  Pete didn’t answer. He’d seen the passenger door open and the rear door, as well. Two more men jumped out into the rain. One, obviously the brother of the cowboy inches away from him, began moving toward the front of the pickup while the other man, still in shadow, rounded the rear.

  Pete took a couple of steps backward, his arms going out from his sides in classic fighting position. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said.

  “You hear that, Jimmy? This here hired hand don’t want any trouble.”

  “I heard him, Bubba. I reckon he’s asking for it though.”

  “Why he surely is. We politely ask the lady of the house to get off our property—and from what I hear tell, old Craig was well paid for it—and instead of listening to us, she goes right out and hires herself a bodyguard,” Bubba said. He moved toward Pete with slow menace. “’Cuz that’s what you really are, ain’t it? A bodyguard. Have to admire you for that, pardner. She’s got a body I wouldn’t mind guarding.”

  The third man stepped out from behind Bubba. “All this talk isn’t necessary,” he said softly, with such a slight accent that Pete couldn’t place it at first. “Let’s just leave our message and go, eh?”

  A Canadian in West Texas? Pete frowned heavily. Drugs. His buddy had been right in his speculation. And the notion fit what was transpiring on the Leary place. It had been empty for years, easy to use as a drop spot. And then Carolyn and the girls had moved in, thwarting the runners.

  He’d stupidly run out into the rain without a weapon, doing the very thing he’d told Carolyn never to do. Living in prison, without benefit of a gun for ten years, he’d momentarily forgotten that in the real world, the outside world, a painfully etched tattoo didn’t guarantee him any more than a shocked understanding from a widowed psychologist.

  Here in the dark, in a torrential rain, facing three fairly good-size men, his tattoo was of no more
help to him than a bouquet of flowers would have been.

  “Like I said, I don’t want any trouble,” Pete growled.

  “Well, way I figure it,” Bubba said, moving in with the force of a derailed train, slamming his fist into Pete’s stomach, “you don’t have a hell of a lot of say about things.”

  Pete got in a couple of swift punches, making Bubba swear, not at Pete but at his brother to grab Pete’s arms. “Damn it! Do I have to tell you everything? Hold him! Son of bitch cut my lip!”

  The third man jumped forward and grabbed Pete on the right as Jimmy moved in on his left.

  Pete struggled to break free and succeeded in shaking Jimmy off for a moment so he could drive his left fist into the Canadian’s face. Despite the fact that he was righthanded, the punch connected squarely with the man’s nose and he dropped his rough grasp on Pete’s arm with a surprised yelp of pain.

  Bubba yelled something at Jimmy and Pete kicked out at the solidly built cowboy, striking him just above his knee. Bubba screamed and crumpled to the muddy ground at the same time his brother rushed Pete again.

  “That’s enough,” the Canadian said in a low, furious voice and in a tone of complete command.

  Whereas Pete was capable of ignoring him, the surprise on Jimmy’s face made him whirl around to face the Canadian. The man stood with a handkerchief pressed to his obviously bleeding nose and a larger-than-life .347 Magnum trained on Pete’s chest. At that range he would not only kill Pete, he would probably take Jimmy out, as well.

  “Don’t be stupid,” the Canadian told Pete somewhat thickly. He waved the gun a little, from Bubba to Pete. “I don’t think he’ll fight you now,” he said.

  Pete winced, knowing what was coming. Bubba and Jimmy would beat the living daylights out of him as a message to Carolyn. And he would have to take it, because it was a lot better that Carolyn bring her daughters home to a beaten message, not a dead one.

  Bubba slung the first punch with relish and Jimmy followed with a couple of quick jabs to Pete’s ribs.

  He’d been in fights before. Plenty of them. But none where he was held at gunpoint and forced to take the hits without benefit of striking back. He hated the helplessness with a gut-wrenching fury. He tucked his arms close to his body and his fists against his face. He hunched down, gritting his teeth at the rain of pounding fists against his back, his kidneys, his shoulders.

  “I think that’s sufficient,” the Canadian said, after the Wannamachers had driven Pete to his knees. “Now, whoever you are, tell Mrs. Leary that her husband was well paid for our rental of this property. And paid in advance. We don’t want her presence here now and would very much appreciate it if she would pack up her pitiful things and go back to Dallas, or anywhere else on earth for that matter.”

  “What’s to stop her from calling the police?” Pete asked with difficulty, for his lips were cut and bleeding freely.

  Bubba kicked him in the side, making him bite back a groan of pain. -

  “Because she knows the brothers here?” the Canadian asked.

  Pete didn’t answer. He was busy trying to figure out a way of leaping to his feet and wresting the gun from the man. That he didn’t stand a prayer in hell of doing so wasn’t the reason he didn’t try; it was the thought of the horrified expressions on two little girls’ faces when they found him dead in the mud.

  “If Mrs. Leary chooses to go to the police, I’m very much afraid she’ll be sorry. She can’t be with her daughters every minute of the day. Tell her that what the Wannamacher brothers did to you, they can very easily do to her daughters. Or to her. And Bubba, I believe, likes the lady, don’t you, Bubba?”

  “You bastard,” Pete said.

  “Exactly. Now, will you remember our little message and pass it along for us? Let’s be generous, however. She can take two days to pack her belongings and clear out. After that, her daughters are fair game. Do you understand?”

  Pete didn’t say anything. He understood all too coldly and all too clearly. But for all the talking that Magnum in the man’s hand was doing now, that gun wouldn’t protect him from Pete for long. The man was going to regret every threat, every nuance of a threat made to Carolyn and her daughters.

  “Finish it,” the man said, and Pete felt movement to his right. Even as he tried throwing himself to the left something with the combined weight of an anvil and the force of a sledgehammer slammed against the back of his head.

  The girls...and Carolyn...were going to find him dead after all, he thought as he slumped down. He never heard the Wannamachers and their cohort leaving. He didn’t hear anything at all.

  Carolyn flinched as lightning carved a jagged fissure across the thundercloud-darkened sky. A half a second later the Ranger shuddered under the impact of the thunder.

  She gripped the steering wheel with both white-knuckled hands. Rain, something as rare as black diamonds, was coming down with a fury, slamming into the windshield with enough force to rock the car and almost wholly obscuring the road.

  Since the entire county had been locked in a drought for some four years, she’d assumed the light shower that afternoon was the rainfall of the season. This torrential downpour was, as the weatherman had predicted, a true gusher.

  She’d already flipped the Ranger into four-wheel drive, in the event that the sudden downpour turned the dirt and gravel road into a mud slide. She drove slowly and carefully, but the lightning and thunder, the rain and slippery road beneath her vehicle, escalated a tension that was already overly high.

  She’d left the girls to stay overnight with her sister-in-law, ostensibly because the girls would be less frightened of the storm with the triplets to constantly distract them. However, the real reason she’d left them with Taylor was because she needed time—without her daughters’ influence—to decide what on earth to do about Pete. On the off chance that he hadn’t disappeared during the afternoon.

  The farmer she’d bought Bratwurst from had told her the horse was scared of thunder. She should have known that was why he was tossing his head earlier. But then she’d only had thoughts for Pete Jackson and Bratwurst’s jet black hair lifting to the still air had somehow seemed an extension of Pete’s mood, their mutual passion.

  A dim part of her hoped he’d already realized he needed to put Bratwurst in the barn with Ralphette and the kittens. But, without knowing about the recalcitrant horse, why should he so much as wonder about the animal?

  She shook her head. The day had turned into an unmitigated disaster. First she discovered the tattoo on Pete’s arm, the death’s head representing murder. She’d followed that choice bit of information with finding out she was the prime object of curiosity at the Almost Over-Sixty Club picnic. Her prize-winning deviled eggs were of much less interest than the mystery man staying on her ranch.

  Then she’d had the uncomfortable encounter with Bubba Wannamacher. He’d left the picnic early, he and his gap-toothed brother. And his insolent tipping of his hat and knowing smile in her direction as he departed had made her skin crawl.

  She’d been thankful when the thunderstorm broke up the picnic, sending people scattering in all directions, some for the church hall, some for their cars, others dashing down the street, heading for their homes, carrying pots, casseroles, and sheet-cake pans filled with melting Jell-O salads.

  Some sixth sense, perhaps born of the day’s tensions, the combined worry over the Wannamacher situation and the deeper, more problematic concern over what to do about Pete Jackson, kicked in as Carolyn pulled into the muddy driveway. She automatically lifted her foot from the accelerator and lightly pumped the brakes, turning the wheel into the slithering slide.

  Though everything looked as it should on a stormy, cold and rainy evening in late February, she knew without any uncertainty that something was terribly wrong.

  Her headlights strafed the barn, then the house, sending the lights’ reflections back at her from the darkened windows. Some fifty yards from the house, she came to a full stop, her hear
t unaccountably thundering in her chest.

  The house and bunkhouse were dark, the barn a black mass to the far right. Bratwurst didn’t appear to be in the corral; he’d either escaped in his panic or Pete had put him in the barn. Even as she took in this seemingly simple evidence that Pete had stayed around her place and she felt a weight lighten from her shoulders, she frowned, staring at a spot some ten yards in front of the bunkhouse, a darker shadow on the ground. A puddle? A blanket?

  But she knew what it was. Who it was.

  She jumped the Ranger several yards forward and slithered to a muddy halt. She threw the vehicle in Park and left it running, the headlights illuminating the still form lying face down in the mud. She leapt from the rocking car.

  “Pete!” she called, sliding through the wet clay, and jumped across a pair of deep tire-induced ruts filled with water to reach his side.

  She had no way of knowing how long he’d been lying there, but his clothes were thoroughly soaked and his body had served as a dam for the water pouring down from the northeast. His skin was cold to the touch and his face was streaked with mud and rain.

  And blood.

  “Oh God, Pete...” she murmured, stroking the water and mud from his face, probing gently to discover where the blood was coming from. She found that easily enough; a darker wet spot on the back of his head revealed a large knot and an open wound.

  She refused to even consider the notion that he might be dead. He was too vital, too powerful. He’d kissed her that afternoon as if there were no tomorrow. She gulped back a sob, ruthlessly forcing the natural progression of that thought to the back of her mind.

  Even as her fingertips gently shifted his hair, he moaned aloud, low and strong. A living, breathing curse against her touch.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked. “You’ve got to get up. I can’t lift you.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered perfectly honestly, though she had a few guesses. The deep ruts flanking his body could only have been made by a heavy vehicle, and not all that long ago, for they weren’t overflowing with the heavy rain yet. Though she was no expert in tire tracks, ruts this deep and this wide could only have been made by a large car, a half-ton pickup, perhaps. The kind the Wannamacher brothers had jumped into before leaving the Almost picnic.